BIRTH MATTERS

A Midwife's Manifesta

by INA MAY GASKIN foreword by Ani Difranco

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New softcover book, 250 pages, published 2011.

In Birth Matters, America's leading midwife Ina May Gaskin reminds us that the ways in which women experience birth have implications for us all. Renewing confidence in a woman's natural ability to birth provides transformative possibilities for individual families, and for society at large. Upbeat and informative, Gaskin asserts that the way in which women become mothers is a women's rights issue, and it is perhaps the act that most powerfully exhibits what it is to be instinctually human.

A woman who gives birth in the US today is more likely to die in childbirth than her mother was. With one in three babies born via caesarean section, the US ranks behind thirty-three other nations in neonatal mortality rates, and forty other nations in maternal mortality rates. Confidence in women's bodies and women's choices has been lost. Known around the world for her birthing practice's exemplary low rates of intervention, morbidity, and mortality, Ina May Gaskin has gained an international reputation in obstetrics for demonstrating the magic key to safe birth: respect for the natural process. Birth Matters is a spirited manifesta showing us how to trust women, value birth, nurture families, and reconcile modern life with a process as old as our species.

About the author
Ina May Gaskin and her husband Stephen founded the famous intentional community known as The Farm in Summertown Tennessee in 1971. There, she and the midwives of the Farm created one of the first out-of-hospital birth centers in the United States. Standards of birthing at the Farm are modeled to the recommendations of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Several family members and friends are commonly in attendance and are encouraged to take an active role in the birth.

Ina May is one of the Founders and a past president (1996 to 2002) of the Midwives' Alliance of North America. She is a powerful advocate for a woman's right to give birth without excessive and unnecessary medical intervention. Her clinical midwifery skills have been developed entirely through independent study and apprenticeship with other midwives around the world. Ina May and fellow Farm midwives were instrumental in the development of the rigorous Certified Professional Midwife (CPM) certification process.

Ina May travels internationally on speaking engagements and networking with other midwives and midwife alliances. She has lectured and continues to lecture at midwifery conferences and medical schools all over the world. She is also the author of Ina May's Guide to Childbirth and Ina May's Guide to Breastfeeding, and wrote the foreword to Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering by Australian author Sarah J. Buckley. Birth Matters is Ina May's latest book

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Birth Matters: A midwife's manifesta by Ina May Gaskin